I only have pictures when people have submitted them. As soon as they’re sent in I’ll gladly put them online. Everything I wrote above applies to first grade as well (I taught first grade for three years).

I would disagree that first graders don’t know how to ask questions. By first grade, all students have gone through a stage of asking tons of questions. However, they may not have any questions to ask about this unit.

Your coach is right that the questions for the board are not about the individual stories (in this case poetry) but about the overall theme. For this reason, you have to make sure that your unit is about something and not just a collection of stories. It’s helpful if you have some questions worked out ahead of time that you would expect students to ask so that you can guide their discussion toward those questions.

For example, through this unit I want students to become aware of authors and the fact that all print comes from someone writing. So I might guide their discussion of environmental print (cereal boxes, wrappers…artifacts students have brought in) to Who are the authors of cereal box writing?

The next level might be about authors forming ideas so maybe someone will ask “How do authors come up with ideas?”

Again, this is just an example but hopefully it shows how you can get beyond some basic questions (who reads? what is reading? what are books?) that students already have answers to to some higher level thoughtful questions.

However, if it’s just reading poetry, what kind of questions are there to ask about that? As adults, what would we ask? If we don’t have any questions, how will the children?

Again thank you and you go Mathew! I am proud to know that you are an LAUSD
Teacher.